Retirement Income Calculator – How much will you really need once you’ve retired, and what are your chances of meeting your goals? The Retirement Income Calculator shows how market uncertainty affects your retirement income strategy.

Give your portfolio an online checkup – Set your goals, get advice on investments, and forecast your chances of success with Financial Engines. Available as a complimentary service to investors with $100,000 or more in assets.

Legacy Planning Calculator – This tool helps you measure the potential wealth accumulation implications of selecting a Traditional or Roth IRA (for you and your beneficiaries).

Breakeven Analysis Calculator – Unsure of what your tax rates will be in 20 years? This unique tool helps you look at IRA selection from the standpoint of breakeven analysis (e.g. what if my effective tax rate in retirement is 30% rather than 25%?).

Distribution Calculator – The RMD Calculator is designed to calculate required distributions.

Rollover Planners

Plan Participant Calculator – Receiving a lump sum distribution from an employer-sponsored retirement plan? This tool will help you identify the tax options available to you and compare the retirement income implications of your various alternatives.

Beneficiary Rollover Planner – Are you a beneficiary receiving a lump sum distribution from an employer-sponsored retirement plan? This tool will help you identify the tax options available to you and compare the retirement income implications of your various alternatives.

Roth IRA Conversion Tools

Basic Conversion Calculator – This straightforward tool helps you quantify the potential benefits of a Roth IRA conversion on the basis of projected (after-tax) retirement income.

Breakeven Analysis Calculator – Unsure of what your tax rates will be in 20 years? This unique tool helps you look at a potentional Roth IRA conversion from the standpoint of breakeven analysis (e.g. what if my effective tax rate in retirement is 30% rather than 25%?).

One problem I noticed with TD Ameritrade retirement calculators: when calculating gap in retirement accounts they only ask you to include money in your tax deferred retirement accounts totally ignoring that you may have other savings. It’s not like other savings are going to disappear at retirement, so this seems silly. Other calculators I’ve seen ask for all of your savings.

The Vanguard calculators also include one for calculating the cost of borrowing from the plan.

One major problem with the Vanguard calculators (and some other ones I have seen online) is that they assume that if you are looking at the calculators, you are nearing retirement. For example, when figuring how long your retirement savings will last, the calculator only allows you to choose a current age (for self and for spouse) of 50 or higher. This can have serious implications if you are a younger investor trying to calculate what your retirement might look like.

I think the 100% income replacement is too high. For me at least, I am living on much less than my income today. I have a house payment that is 20% of income and savings (retirement, college, and other) is another 20%. With a paid off house and kids out of college, I know that I can likely live on a 70-75% number comfortably.

While Fidelity clearly heads up the pack, there are some key flaws in their tool, including:
– if you have international funds in your portfolio, they suggest you sell them and invest domestically (Hello? Diversification?)
– they use a replacement rate of income to calculate your needed retirement income. This approach has largely been discredited by independent financial advisors as an inaccurate way to forecast needs.
– They run an insufficient number of Monte Carlo simulations (“at least 250” which sounds a lot like “we do 250”) Most planners do at least 1,000.